Lusternia needs bands. We have plays, and bardic contests, but why no bands?

Basically a band's performance would be done on the stage like a play, except instead of play characters you have normal characters, they play instruments and sing out lyrics, and have special effects. Instead of being written by one person, each person in the band writes out their own parts.

I wonder, can the normal system for plays etc. make this work?

Winnae on the bass most likely

Almost definitely, just set the characters to the performers and everything else is as normal

I'm pretty sure Hallifax does solo musical pieces all the time.

Yeah, this could definitely already be done in the current system.

Absolutely. Those who have Music skill even get an extra BACKSTAGE PERFORM command for performing songs using the same format as their usual music-playing, either their usual pre-composed songs or ones they improvise on the spot. One of my earliest productions (though I was never able to perform it) was a string quartet, for which I designed a set of instruments, too.

I agree that the theater mechanics is more than flexible enough for bands to get together to perform concerts, etc.

Maybe all we need is a way for directors to flag a performance as a 'concert' or 'play' (anything else?) which would show up in the performance list. Or am I missing something?

Ooh, if we can flag performances as things, Hallifax sometimes uses the stage to give lectures, so that's another one.

Oh yes, I had so many 'theatre' ideas that aren't actually plays.

Seconding Phoebus's idea of 'lectures' as a classification. Ridley's one (Hallifax) immediately jumped to mind, though it fits better in the 'powerpoint presentation' class.

Would these flags just be for cosmetic purposes, or would they have any mechanical effect, such as determining which could or could not be submitted for prestige? I'd also suggest 'quiz' or 'game' as a possible flag.

could be more categories for culture. Similar to libraries having scholarly and literary.

BACKSTAGE PRESENTATION

Presentation Type:
- Concert
- Play
- Sermon
- Speech
- Informational

Just my thoughts

If you want to make an exhaustive list, better get Debate, Lecture, and Illusion Show in there, but I think it would make more sense to just let people put a short tag of their own devising of up to (say) 12 characters. Making a fixed list would only be useful if we wanted to ensure normalized data for subtotaling and stuff, which doesn't really apply.

Then again, how hard is it to make sure your title makes clear what it is? I'm not sure that splitting 12 characters off the length of the title to put it into a separate field really adds much.

Lecture is covered in speech.

Debate would be informational.

What would an illusion show be? LIke a laser light?

Like Rainbowmancy, now playing at a theatre near you.

One thing it adds that I can see (although granted, I don't know much of the current system) is the ability to list various types of performances.

That effect shouldn't be understated. If I hadn't read this thread, I wouldn't have thought about using the stage for anything but theater.

Actually, I meant more for people looking for plays, and not playwrights. But that's a good thing too!

On a related note to being able to tag a play type:

STAGE LIST

instead of just STAGE LIST, so you can find what you are looking for, didnt realize needed a syntax for it.

Anyone who wants to see what the theater system can really do for a band type performance, check out the blasted lands Jagrerox quest. Cool or not, the layout and coloring of the lyrics is really well done.